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Make Minions Great Again

Well, in all seriousness, this is building on Ryan's earlier thread that highlighted how there's too much stall and monotonous ranged stuff in the game.
In classical chess, you basically sent pawns and some occasional champions off to kill each other in bloody trade chains. The minions were a vital part of the war effort and had distinct combat value, either as the vanguard of a charge, or as a piece to back of a champion.
With that in mind, I have identified a few problematic areas for minions along with some suggestions that will MAKE MINIONS GREAT AGAIN:
Necro:
Unlike it's balanced counterpart, the SK, Necro can threaten enemy minions while staying outside of their melee range. If I want to threaten SK magic on enemy minions, I need to exploit a blind spot - I can't just march up and throw soul-making magic like rice at a wedding.
What's worse is that Necro conversion only costs 2 - Lich Summons cost 4 and the added convenience of a Lich Summon is easily offset by the fact that necro conversions kill an enemy minion, making each instance heavily favoured towards the Necro's side.
Necros can simply retreat when being threatened and they can also be covered by other pieces. Their Kings coverage makes threats much harder to make. Porta/Beacon allows Necros to rapidly sieze map control in a way that makes up for their supposed mobility weakness and 2 Necros will choke a wide zone of all minion advances.
Suggestion 1: Make the cost on part with SK costs.
Suggestion 2: Remove their melee coverage and adjust costs a little.
Ranger:
Fork threats without needing to commit, and Kings Coverage at higher levels. 2 Rangers side by side will form an impassable screen. When threatened, can retreat.
Suggestion 1: Like their minion counterpart, the Archer, remove their melee attacks.
Suggestion 2: Implement a hefty cost to their ranged destroy or make their destroy champion only.
Forst Mage:
A 3-square wall of impassable space. Frost mage by itself isn't so bad, it's the 20 or so other pieces it combos with that makes it bad. Despite the tempo cost, it's not hard to set up a self-sustaining defence and simply stall with Frost. Ranger, Samurai, SK, Lillith, and to a lesser extent, Pyro and Druid, all benefit immensely from the stall opportunities. And it's simply too hard for most minions to advance past that wall.
Minor Suggestion: Make each cast of magic cost 1 morale. If you're only using Frost a few times to get a strategic advantage and can capitalize on that moment, you should still be fine.
Soulflare:
Soulflare almost always trades favourably with enemy minions. If it charms an enemy and the charmed piece immediately dies afterwards, the two sides have lost one piece each, respectively. All soulflare needs is to trade for a piece of equal or higher value. Now, I have no issue with clever forks by minions, such as a pawn forking two rooks or something like that, but in my opinion, soulflare requires too little skill to use - if your threat fails you can simply retreat the soulflare and it's hard enough to threaten a soulflare on the diagonal.
The only case where Soulflare doesn't trade favourably is if the Soulflare trades for a militia, and you kill "their" militia, giving them the morale penalty. But that's like, one case.
Suggestion 1: Make the charm a ranged ability so soulflare can't charm over the heads of other minions. Also remove the ability for soulflare to move backwards.
Suggestion 2: Maybe make the charm a ranged ability so soulflare can't charm over the heads of other minions. Massively increase the setup cost of soulflare.
Behemoth:
Not quite a minion crippler, but thought I should mention it while I was here. 7 cost for the base is way too cheap. If I trade 4 behemoths for 3 enemy champions, even if I am down a piece, if the enemy's champs cost 9 each, I've lost less power on the field. If the enemy pieces cost 12 each, that's an 8 morale gain for myside, both raw morale, and power on the field. People are simply spamming 4 behemoths, sometimes supplemented by Lifestones to trade until they reach endgame with very strong endgame pieces. Since a trade chain against behemoths can't use minions, it's too easy right now for behemoths to force a trade against enemy champions when they aren't running things like Fire Elemental, Ranger, SK, Pyro, etc.
Suggestion 1: Just increase the costs again. If a Behemoth cost 9, 4 of them would collectively cost 36 and it becomes much harder to force unfavourable trades from opponents. (Also, less endgame bullshit)
Suggestion 2: Instead of invulnerability, make behemoths lose 4 value every time they are targetted by an enemy minion ability. So 2 hits, and a base level behemoth will fall.
Wrath:
Make the trigger apply to adjacent kills by champions.

> *Originally posted by **[DeviousRogue](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246148)**:*
> Necro:
> Unlike it's balanced counterpart, the SK, Necro can threaten enemy minions while staying outside of their melee range. If I want to threaten SK magic on enemy minions, I need to exploit a blind spot - I can't just march up and throw soul-making magic like rice at a wedding.
> What's worse is that Necro conversion only costs 2 - Lich Summons cost 4 and the added convenience of a Lich Summon is easily offset by the fact that necro conversions kill an enemy minion, making each instance heavily favoured towards the Necro's side.
> Necros can simply retreat when being threatened and they can also be covered by other pieces. Their Kings coverage makes threats much harder to make. Porta/Beacon allows Necros to rapidly sieze map control in a way that makes up for their supposed mobility weakness and 2 Necros will choke a wide zone of all minion advances.
> Suggestion 1: **Make the cost on part with SK costs.**
> Suggestion 2: Remove their melee coverage and adjust costs a little.
Help my favorite setup has a soft counter, please double the cost on the counter unit thanks. I know you're a better player than this, it's really unbecoming of you.
I can understand why ryan is so down on necromancers because unupgraded samurai are basically the worst-case scenario for fighting necromancers--but then they're also recognized by a lot of top players as the best all-around line minion, so it's probably fair that they have a weakness. But there are a lot of ways to push necromancers around--minions that can retreat, minions with move-from-start, minions with range 2, etc. If you're running an expensive minion line your'e going to have access to these kinds of abilities, and if you're running a cheap minon line 1) you can make necromancers lose morale trades badly and 2) you have a much stronger champion lines to threaten trades with the necromancer (easier than ever since the price hike.) Even running multiple necromancers, against competent players I have to bring multiple necromancers and fight my ass off just to get *one* skeleton, which is frequently more of a liability than an asset. Hello Mr. Soulkeeper, please have a free ghost. What's that Mr. Vampire? You want to sacrifice a pawn for a 12 point morale swing? Be my guest! As a necro user I'd much prefer the 0.48 necromancer, and honestly I'd almost prefer paying 0.49 costs and not generating skeletons on destroy.
It's also hilarious that you use necromancer+portal combo as an example of why necromancers are supposedly overpowered, when it's a *liability* that you're basically forced to give up minion slots in order to have any hope of getting necromancers into action fast enough to not get locked out of the middle. Even beacon is too slow against some setups, leaving you stuck with the mostly inferior portal.

> *Originally posted by **[DeviousRogue](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246148)**:*
> With that in mind, I have identified a few problematic areas for minions along with some suggestions that will MAKE MINIONS GREAT AGAIN:
#makeLichLiterallyUnbeatableAgain

> *Originally posted by **[F300XEN](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246308)**:*
> > *Originally posted by **[DeviousRogue](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246148)**:*
> > With that in mind, I have identified a few problematic areas for minions along with some suggestions that will MAKE MINIONS GREAT AGAIN:
>
> #makeLichLiterallyUnbeatableAgain
Nerf that too. Spwnd Sklt0 lasts 10 turns.

> *Originally posted by **[geepope](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246301)**:*
> > *Originally posted by **[DeviousRogue](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246148)**:*
> > Necro:
> > Unlike it's balanced counterpart, the SK, Necro can threaten enemy minions while staying outside of their melee range. If I want to threaten SK magic on enemy minions, I need to exploit a blind spot - I can't just march up and throw soul-making magic like rice at a wedding.
> > What's worse is that Necro conversion only costs 2 - Lich Summons cost 4 and the added convenience of a Lich Summon is easily offset by the fact that necro conversions kill an enemy minion, making each instance heavily favoured towards the Necro's side.
> > Necros can simply retreat when being threatened and they can also be covered by other pieces. Their Kings coverage makes threats much harder to make. Porta/Beacon allows Necros to rapidly sieze map control in a way that makes up for their supposed mobility weakness and 2 Necros will choke a wide zone of all minion advances.
> > Suggestion 1: **Make the cost on part with SK costs.**
> > Suggestion 2: Remove their melee coverage and adjust costs a little.
>
> Help my favorite setup has a soft counter, please double the cost on the counter unit thanks. I know you're a better player than this, it's really unbecoming of you.
>
> I can understand why ryan is so down on necromancers because unupgraded samurai are basically the worst-case scenario for fighting necromancers--but then they're also recognized by a lot of top players as the best all-around line minion, so it's probably fair that they have a weakness. But there are a lot of ways to push necromancers around--minions that can retreat, minions with move-from-start, minions with range 2, etc. If you're running an expensive minion line your'e going to have access to these kinds of abilities, and if you're running a cheap minon line 1) you can make necromancers lose morale trades badly and 2) you have a much stronger champion lines to threaten trades with the necromancer (easier than ever since the price hike.) Even running multiple necromancers, against competent players I have to bring multiple necromancers and fight my ass off just to get *one* skeleton, which is frequently more of a liability than an asset. Hello Mr. Soulkeeper, please have a free ghost. What's that Mr. Vampire? You want to sacrifice a pawn for a 12 point morale swing? Be my guest! As a necro user I'd much prefer the 0.48 necromancer, and honestly I'd almost prefer paying 0.49 costs and not generating skeletons on destroy.
>
> It's also hilarious that you use necromancer+portal combo as an example of why necromancers are supposedly overpowered, when it's a *liability* that you're basically forced to give up minion slots in order to have any hope of getting necromancers into action fast enough to not get locked out of the middle. Even beacon is too slow against some setups, leaving you stuck with the mostly inferior portal.
I think you're missing the point (and being quite insulting, which is very unbecoming of you I might add). The thread is not necessarily talking about pieces that are overpowered, it's talking about pieces which are damaging to minion play. No matter how you say it, necromancer hurts minion play, you can rarely develop minions if necromancer's are blocking all their squares, or if the necromancer can easily move in and threaten it.
On the subject of soulflare, I think it's main issue is that it's either really good (trades favourable for the enemy minions), or really bad (trades unfavourably for the enemy minions). It's almost impossible to prevent it from trading into your minion line, and if your minions are expensive you will just be losing right off the bat.
Behemoth/lifestone spam is another problem, depending on your setup you might have almost no counter-play. Advancing minions into a wall of behemoths is just suicide, and it's unlikely you can trade favourably for them at 7 cost with lifestones. If you have a very basic setup with no magic/armour there is not much you can do.

Necromancers are easily countered by champion development, especially since their cost was increased with the last update. Geepope's army is the most infamous example of necros among the higher ranked players and in his case it's even worse since anything he trades for is both a necro and a fireball lost. It doesn't help him that he uses harpies, the worst of the rook-likes, because he needs the push for fireball mobility and the jump to get over the wall, but nevermind that.
I think Gee's anger is perfectly justified, he knows better than literally anyone else just how easily his army is beaten by a competent player who understands the weaknesses of both necromancers and fireballs and he's suffered greatly for it in games against me at the very least. Judging from his comment about soulkeepers and vampires he's also probably also suffered even harder against other people running those pieces - effectively soft-counters.
Necro is nothing like soulkeeper because soulkeeper defends the ghosts it creates, necro does not. I have never seen a necro skeleton survive, because there is literally nothing ever stopping you from just taking it with a champion.
If you're losing to necros its because you lack the ability to develop champions quickly enough to block the necro. You should always be able to do this. Yes, even if your opponent is using a portal. If you are unable then it is a deficiency in your setup and one that you will always suffer against setups designed to exploit that deficiency, a-la Geepope.
I actually can't even remember the last time Gee got a kill on one of my minions and it was *favourable* for him, because morale-wise we came out even and I usually only ever let him get a kill when I get a necro and fireball in return. This isn't me saying i'm particularly good or Geepope is particularly bad, the army is just straight up weak and easily countered, and not by pieces but by setup and positionning. That Geepope might do well with it at all is a testament to the weakness of the average player's setup and his own skill at the game.
Also, devious, you realize that SK cost is 1 right? I think you meant Lich. Or we could go with your proposition to buff necro. Can't believe Geepope didn't notice that when he quoted and replied to you. He even bolded the SK. XD
As for soulflare, trading soulflare for a slightly more expensive minion is incredibly stupid. I agree that soulflare is very (almost too) good, but not because you can usually achieve an advantageous trade for it - value is relative in a game, and a difference of 1 or 2 morale in minions means nothing. I've traded 15 value pieces for 7 value pieces before because those 7 value pieces were worth three times that much given the position on the board - if a low value piece is the only thing standing between you and victory, it doesn't matter what you have to do to get rid fo it.
This principle also applies to minions, and it applies before the game even starts - the minions in front of your king are immediately worth, IMO, twice as much as their prescribed values, because an open king allows you to start making use of endgame units before you reach the endgame. Taking a samurai with a soulflare is a stupid thing to do when you could take **a king** with just a few more moves. The reason soulflare is so good is because its range allows it to do this. I'll take a pawn guarding a king with a soulflare++ over a samurai on the other side of the board any day.
This is unfortunate, because the only effective way to nerf soulflare would be to lower that range, and that would make soulflare shit again. Or increase cost (by 1 at all tiers above base), I guess. The only reason people who don't use soulflare on king minions are using it is to counter other soulflares or because every single other minion in the game was also nerfed, so that would probably reduce its popularity by a good deal among people who don't know how to properly use the piece.
Frostmage is garbage unless comboed with other pieces to make up for its deficiencies. Once this happens, it's still garbage because once the frostmage is dead the opponent's army falls apart. Relative value, it becomes their queen and they lose just as easily once it is gone (though you can usually trade something much less valuable for it, because frostmage has so very little mobility).
Behemoth is theoretically good, but the problem is that you're forgetting one weakness in every single army in the game: The king.
Yes! That's right! Believe it or not, every single army in the game has a king. And the objective of every single match that you play is not "Kill more minions than that guy" or "Kill more champs than that guy" or "Promote these guys". It's "Kill the king". The objective isn't as powerfully enforced as in classical chess but it's still very much the best way to win (except against Lich spammers), and a behemoth lifestone army suffers from two critical weaknesses: Tempo and Defense.
The first issue to consider is tempo. Tempo is the speed of a match, your ability to move and make threats that your opponent is forced to respond to instead of advancing their own game. It is the intiative, it is the course and flow of a game. When you gain tempo you gain control. When you run behemoth, a king move unit, and intend to trade it with pieces by supporting it with other behemoths, also king move units, you have decided from round one to give up any and all offensive capabilities that you might have had. You are no longer able to make effective threats because you will need exactly 11 moves (1 to move a minion, 10 to move the behemoths to the minion line) before your behemoths become effective threats. Unless your opponent is literally the worst player in the game, you will NOT get 11 free moves of development while they do nothing. In those 11 moves, your opponent, who runs pieces that can actually move and have legitimate threat ranges, will have developped an attack on your king that is a thousand times more important to the game than your two behemoths trading for the single low value champion they will give you. Given 5 free moves of development I could create an unwinnable position on the board with my army against any player in the game - maybe it wouldn't be immediately obvious to either my opponent or a viewer but doing something like that is a blunder equivalent to giving up a mid-value champion, because believe it or not, *position really matters in chess*. 11 free moves of development is absolute suicide.
This is the obvious weakness of behemoth+lifestone. This is why many players who run this setup also run a single beacon or portal, oftentimes 2 to help with their tempo management. In the case of 2 behemoths getting to a threatening position while defending themselves, a single or two beacons gets it down to 6 moves, a single portal gets it down to 5, two portals gets it down to 4. (Note: While portals are mathematically better than beacons at the start beacons are more universally useful throughout the rest of the game). These 4 turns are still bad but because your behemoths can't be threatened by the minions your opponent will have developed you are in a manageable situation.
Now, you have turned your tempo problem from impossible to just bad. However, you are now also running lifestones (Which can't attack and are a major liability), and either beacons or portals (which can't attack and are a slight liablity). Any piece in this game that cannot attack is an immediate material disadvantage that you start the game with. Yes, even lifestones. In fact, especially lifestones - lifestones are a delayed material advantage. You lose material and morale in the first part of the game to get it back later, and as a result you give yourself a potentially stronger endgame than your opponent. However, as a result, you're stuck with an immobile minion that can't attack, which can give your opponent a potentially insurmountable advantage in the early and midgame, and can cost you very dearly if they can kill the stone. Even one of these severely weakens the structural integrity of a minion line. 2 is considered the absolute max you should ever run by most top tier players. So let's say you follow our advice and you run two lifestones with your behemoth wall, along with either 1 or 2 beacons/portals.
Congratulations! You now have an army where about 1/4 of the pieces you have cannot attack and, in fact, actively hinder your development and ability to threaten other pieces! Are you feeling OP yet?
In fact, what will happen is that if your opponent is competent and they have an organized setup, while you're busy trying to attack their minions with your behemoths, they will attack your king with their *actual pieces*, and because you have no minions to defend your king with, your beloved endgame units (not the behemoths - they're too slow) will end up being traded off and you'll lose.
As long as your opponent possesses the ability to pressure your king, you will always, always lose this matchup unless your opponent blunders. And if your opponent does not have the ability to pressure your king, then, well, they're doing chess wrong.
Oh, also, armour, magic and that gimmicky betel/intrepid setup would tear you to fucking pieces.

On Behemoth Lifestone: So I played a game back in v0.48 against behemoth lifestone. I think I could have done better (I gave away a pike for free basically at one point) and in the late game I really took advantage of shield, which of course I could not do now. I did also have the advantage of 2 armored pieces, which are a counter. I'm not sure if I was being stupid by letting my opponent get his behemoths out and not taking advantage of tempo, but this was the first time I had played against behemoth lifestone. So idk if I'm showing an example of how to beat behemoth lifestone or me being bad, but [here's](https://youtu.be/AzdCi1ZjhZQ) the video.

> *Originally posted by **[ryan487](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246438)**:*
> I think you're missing the point (and being quite insulting, which is very unbecoming of you I might add). The thread is not necessarily talking about pieces that are overpowered, it's talking about pieces which are damaging to minion play. No matter how you say it, necromancer hurts minion play, you can rarely develop minions if necromancer's are blocking all their squares, or if the necromancer can easily move in and threaten it.
I mean, yeah, necromancer hurts minion play. Most pieces are going to be better vs. certain pieces and playstyles than others, and that's not a design problem until it reaches a point where you're creating matchups that are won or lost as soon as the game starts based on army comp. But good minion play is enough to overcome necromancers, and I say necromancer*s*, plural, because you don't even need good play to get around a single necromancer. Is it a bit more of an uphill battle than if you're playing someone who doesn't have necromancers? Sure, obviously. But minion lineups vary in how vulnerable they are to necromancers, and the ones that are particularly vulnerable happen to have other advantages relative to similarly costed minion options. Sounds like a pretty fair trade-off to me, especially since necromancers are nowhere close to an instant win even in ideal matchups.
The original pre-0.40 necromancer design was a much better example of a bad design that was harmful to the game, because it was ludicrously good against some minion lineups and completely useless against others. I could buy an argument that the current necromancer+++ might be a problem due to the expanded magic coverage; one necro+++ doesn't do much, but double necro+++ has enough coverage that you can oppress minions pretty effortlessly (I know this from experience, because that's the coverage of the original necro++ and I can attest to the difference between knight jump coverage and knight jump+middle coverage.) That's a huge chunk of build points in a couple really fragile champions, so it's not really clear how effective it would actually be, but it's not clear that it needs to exist at all.
> *Originally posted by **[drakilian](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246575)**:*
> In fact, what will happen is that if your opponent is competent and they have an organized setup, while you're busy trying to attack their minions with your behemoths, they will attack your king with their *actual pieces*, and because you have no minions to defend your king with, your beloved endgame units (not the behemoths - they're too slow) will end up being traded off and you'll lose.
>
> As long as your opponent possesses the ability to pressure your king, you will always, always lose this matchup unless your opponent blunders. And if your opponent does not have the ability to pressure your king, then, well, they're doing chess wrong.
>
> Oh, also, armour, magic and that gimmicky betel/intrepid setup would tear you to fucking pieces.
As ryan points out, the problem with behemoth spam is that it creates really lopsided matchups--it's a fairly hard counter for most melee armies while also being countered even harder by ranged/magic armies (even mixed ones.) So it's very definitely not OP, but it's definitely not healthy for the meta either. Going to repost my thoughts from elsewhere:
> *Originally posted by **[geepope](/forums/32630/topics/699979?page=5#11244129)**:*
> IMO the behemoth's price is theoretically "fair" but it's a very bad idea to place a piece at a price point where it's immune to practically everything that's noticeably cheaper than it because it turns into ridiculously efficient trade fodder. Even things like HA and soulkeepers are fairly soft counters because they can't push back very hard; soulkeepers in particular aren't great because anti-soulkeeper pieces are way less expensive than soulkeepers. I think the upper levels of behemoth are fine as-is, so I would love to see something like this:
>
> ![](http://i.imgur.com/8OBoYiK.png)
>
> That way people who want anti-minion power can still happily go stomping around, but it's actually possible for them to lose 1-for-1 trades. I feel it's more thematic, too. You'd expect a piece named "behemoth" to be big and flashy and expensive, not be slumming around with the cheapest and weakest combat champs.

> *Originally posted by **[StratShotPlayer](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246337)**:*
> > *Originally posted by **[F300XEN](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246308)**:*
> > > *Originally posted by **[DeviousRogue](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246148)**:*
> > > With that in mind, I have identified a few problematic areas for minions along with some suggestions that will MAKE MINIONS GREAT AGAIN:
> >
> > #makeLichLiterallyUnbeatableAgain
>
> Nerf that too. Spwnd Sklt0 lasts 10 turns.
Probably the best Lich nerf suggestion I've ever seen. You could probs even lower the summoning cost per skeleton if it becomes possible to stall out the skeles.
> *Originally posted by **[drakilian](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246575)**:*
> Necromancers are easily countered by champion development, especially since their cost was increased with the last update. Geepope's army is the most infamous example of necros among the higher ranked players and in his case it's even worse since anything he trades for is both a necro and a fireball lost. It doesn't help him that he uses harpies, the worst of the rook-likes, because he needs the push for fireball mobility and the jump to get over the wall, but nevermind that.
>
> I think Gee's anger is perfectly justified, he knows better than literally anyone else just how easily his army is beaten by a competent player who understands the weaknesses of both necromancers and fireballs and he's suffered greatly for it in games against me at the very least. Judging from his comment about soulkeepers and vampires he's also probably also suffered even harder against other people running those pieces - effectively soft-counters.
>
> Necro is nothing like soulkeeper because soulkeeper defends the ghosts it creates, necro does not. I have never seen a necro skeleton survive, because there is literally nothing ever stopping you from just taking it with a champion.
>
> If you're losing to necros its because you lack the ability to develop champions quickly enough to block the necro. You should always be able to do this. Yes, even if your opponent is using a portal. If you are unable then it is a deficiency in your setup and one that you will always suffer against setups designed to exploit that deficiency, a-la Geepope.
>
> I actually can't even remember the last time Gee got a kill on one of my minions and it was *favourable* for him, because morale-wise we came out even and I usually only ever let him get a kill when I get a necro and fireball in return. This isn't me saying i'm particularly good or Geepope is particularly bad, the army is just straight up weak and easily countered, and not by pieces but by setup and positionning. That Geepope might do well with it at all is a testament to the weakness of the average player's setup and his own skill at the game.
>
> Also, devious, you realize that SK cost is 1 right? I think you meant Lich. Or we could go with your proposition to buff necro. Can't believe Geepope didn't notice that when he quoted and replied to you. He even bolded the SK. XD
>
> As for soulflare, trading soulflare for a slightly more expensive minion is incredibly stupid. I agree that soulflare is very (almost too) good, but not because you can usually achieve an advantageous trade for it - value is relative in a game, and a difference of 1 or 2 morale in minions means nothing. I've traded 15 value pieces for 7 value pieces before because those 7 value pieces were worth three times that much given the position on the board - if a low value piece is the only thing standing between you and victory, it doesn't matter what you have to do to get rid fo it.
We were talking about the setup cost, not operational cost of the Necro/SK.
xD
>
> This principle also applies to minions, and it applies before the game even starts - the minions in front of your king are immediately worth, IMO, twice as much as their prescribed values, because an open king allows you to start making use of endgame units before you reach the endgame. Taking a samurai with a soulflare is a stupid thing to do when you could take **a king** with just a few more moves. The reason soulflare is so good is because its range allows it to do this. I'll take a pawn guarding a king with a soulflare++ over a samurai on the other side of the board any day.
>
> This is unfortunate, because the only effective way to nerf soulflare would be to lower that range, and that would make soulflare shit again. Or increase cost (by 1 at all tiers above base), I guess. The only reason people who don't use soulflare on king minions are using it is to counter other soulflares or because every single other minion in the game was also nerfed, so that would probably reduce its popularity by a good deal among people who don't know how to properly use the piece.
>
> Frostmage is garbage unless comboed with other pieces to make up for its deficiencies. Once this happens, it's still garbage because once the frostmage is dead the opponent's army falls apart. Relative value, it becomes their queen and they lose just as easily once it is gone (though you can usually trade something much less valuable for it, because frostmage has so very little mobility).
>
> Behemoth is theoretically good, but the problem is that you're forgetting one weakness in every single army in the game: The king.
>
> Yes! That's right! Believe it or not, every single army in the game has a king. And the objective of every single match that you play is not "Kill more minions than that guy" or "Kill more champs than that guy" or "Promote these guys". It's "Kill the king". The objective isn't as powerfully enforced as in classical chess but it's still very much the best way to win (except against Lich spammers), and a behemoth lifestone army suffers from two critical weaknesses: Tempo and Defense.
>
> The first issue to consider is tempo. Tempo is the speed of a match, your ability to move and make threats that your opponent is forced to respond to instead of advancing their own game. It is the intiative, it is the course and flow of a game. When you gain tempo you gain control. When you run behemoth, a king move unit, and intend to trade it with pieces by supporting it with other behemoths, also king move units, you have decided from round one to give up any and all offensive capabilities that you might have had. You are no longer able to make effective threats because you will need exactly 11 moves (1 to move a minion, 10 to move the behemoths to the minion line) before your behemoths become effective threats. Unless your opponent is literally the worst player in the game, you will NOT get 11 free moves of development while they do nothing. In those 11 moves, your opponent, who runs pieces that can actually move and have legitimate threat ranges, will have developped an attack on your king that is a thousand times more important to the game than your two behemoths trading for the single low value champion they will give you. Given 5 free moves of development I could create an unwinnable position on the board with my army against any player in the game - maybe it wouldn't be immediately obvious to either my opponent or a viewer but doing something like that is a blunder equivalent to giving up a mid-value champion, because believe it or not, *position really matters in chess*. 11 free moves of development is absolute suicide.
>
> This is the obvious weakness of behemoth+lifestone. This is why many players who run this setup also run a single beacon or portal, oftentimes 2 to help with their tempo management. In the case of 2 behemoths getting to a threatening position while defending themselves, a single or two beacons gets it down to 6 moves, a single portal gets it down to 5, two portals gets it down to 4. (Note: While portals are mathematically better than beacons at the start beacons are more universally useful throughout the rest of the game). These 4 turns are still bad but because your behemoths can't be threatened by the minions your opponent will have developed you are in a manageable situation.
>
> Now, you have turned your tempo problem from impossible to just bad. However, you are now also running lifestones (Which can't attack and are a major liability), and either beacons or portals (which can't attack and are a slight liablity). Any piece in this game that cannot attack is an immediate material disadvantage that you start the game with. Yes, even lifestones. In fact, especially lifestones - lifestones are a delayed material advantage. You lose material and morale in the first part of the game to get it back later, and as a result you give yourself a potentially stronger endgame than your opponent. However, as a result, you're stuck with an immobile minion that can't attack, which can give your opponent a potentially insurmountable advantage in the early and midgame, and can cost you very dearly if they can kill the stone. Even one of these severely weakens the structural integrity of a minion line. 2 is considered the absolute max you should ever run by most top tier players. So let's say you follow our advice and you run two lifestones with your behemoth wall, along with either 1 or 2 beacons/portals.
>
> Congratulations! You now have an army where about 1/4 of the pieces you have cannot attack and, in fact, actively hinder your development and ability to threaten other pieces! Are you feeling OP yet?
>
> In fact, what will happen is that if your opponent is competent and they have an organized setup, while you're busy trying to attack their minions with your behemoths, they will attack your king with their *actual pieces*, and because you have no minions to defend your king with, your beloved endgame units (not the behemoths - they're too slow) will end up being traded off and you'll lose.
>
> As long as your opponent possesses the ability to pressure your king, you will always, always lose this matchup unless your opponent blunders. And if your opponent does not have the ability to pressure your king, then, well, they're doing chess wrong.
The thing is, with some champions next to your king, you can defend just fine for a long time, and tempo matters a lot less with behemoth because
1: No matter how quickly your minions develop, behemoths can just ignore them and continue to setup
2: You need to be lucky enough to develop your champions frightfully fast such that whenever you take an enemy behemoth, you're not losing greater value. (And unless you're running Behemoths of your own, the enemy can defend his behemoths with minions)
There is no melee way to trade favourably against behemoths unless you're running the really weak kind of stuff that you should never run more than 1 or 2 of.
> *Originally posted by **[geepope](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246919)**:*
> > *Originally posted by **[ryan487](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246438)**:*
> > I think you're missing the point (and being quite insulting, which is very unbecoming of you I might add). The thread is not necessarily talking about pieces that are overpowered, it's talking about pieces which are damaging to minion play. No matter how you say it, necromancer hurts minion play, you can rarely develop minions if necromancer's are blocking all their squares, or if the necromancer can easily move in and threaten it.
>
> I mean, yeah, necromancer hurts minion play. Most pieces are going to be better vs. certain pieces and playstyles than others, and that's not a design problem until it reaches a point where you're creating matchups that are won or lost as soon as the game starts based on army comp. But good minion play is enough to overcome necromancers, and I say necromancer*s*, plural, because you don't even need good play to get around a single necromancer. Is it a bit more of an uphill battle than if you're playing someone who doesn't have necromancers? Sure, obviously. But minion lineups vary in how vulnerable they are to necromancers, and the ones that are particularly vulnerable happen to have other advantages relative to similarly costed minion options. Sounds like a pretty fair trade-off to me, especially since necromancers are nowhere close to an instant win even in ideal matchups.
>
> The original pre-0.40 necromancer design was a much better example of a bad design that was harmful to the game, because it was ludicrously good against some minion lineups and completely useless against others. I could buy an argument that the current necromancer+++ might be a problem due to the expanded magic coverage; one necro+++ doesn't do much, but double necro+++ has enough coverage that you can oppress minions pretty effortlessly (I know this from experience, because that's the coverage of the original necro++ and I can attest to the difference between knight jump coverage and knight jump+middle coverage.) That's a huge chunk of build points in a couple really fragile champions, so it's not really clear how effective it would actually be, but it's not clear that it needs to exist at all.
No, it can very much be a problem even if it hasn't gotten to a dichotomous stage. Breakfast was a huge problem, Poisonmage+++ was a huge problem, PortalValk was a huge problem. All but a few very powerful minion lines are all massively vulnerable to necro threats because Necros have next to no weaknesses vs minions - they can melee minions that aren't protected and they can cast from range to make forked threats. Necros aren't so much OP as they are heavily game-skewing and frustrating conceptually. It's not the frustration that comes from playing someone much more skilled than you (i.e., the feeling of playing against a chess pro), it's the kind of frustration that comes from hitting a brick wall and given only one option on how to deal with it.
Most minion lines simply can't beat Necros, especially higher tier ones. If your minion walks up to melee range while supported, necro simply needs to retreat or sidestep to threaten the minion with magic. If you can't make an immediate threat, the only option to to try and move the targetted minion out of range, and since many minions lack the ability to retreat, this is almost a death sentence. Minions beating Necros by themselves is a myth.
> > *Originally posted by **[drakilian](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11246575)**:*
> > In fact, what will happen is that if your opponent is competent and they have an organized setup, while you're busy trying to attack their minions with your behemoths, they will attack your king with their *actual pieces*, and because you have no minions to defend your king with, your beloved endgame units (not the behemoths - they're too slow) will end up being traded off and you'll lose.
> >
> > As long as your opponent possesses the ability to pressure your king, you will always, always lose this matchup unless your opponent blunders. And if your opponent does not have the ability to pressure your king, then, well, they're doing chess wrong.
> >
> > Oh, also, armour, magic and that gimmicky betel/intrepid setup would tear you to fucking pieces.
>
> As ryan points out, the problem with behemoth spam is that it creates really lopsided matchups--it's a fairly hard counter for most melee armies while also being countered even harder by ranged/magic armies (even mixed ones.) So it's very definitely not OP, but it's definitely not healthy for the meta either. Going to repost my thoughts from elsewhere:
>
> > *Originally posted by **[geepope](/forums/32630/topics/699979?page=5#11244129)**:*
> > IMO the behemoth's price is theoretically "fair" but it's a very bad idea to place a piece at a price point where it's immune to practically everything that's noticeably cheaper than it because it turns into ridiculously efficient trade fodder. Even things like HA and soulkeepers are fairly soft counters because they can't push back very hard; soulkeepers in particular aren't great because anti-soulkeeper pieces are way less expensive than soulkeepers. I think the upper levels of behemoth are fine as-is, so I would love to see something like this:
> >
> > ![](http://i.imgur.com/8OBoYiK.png)
> >
> > That way people who want anti-minion power can still happily go stomping around, but it's actually possible for them to lose 1-for-1 trades. I feel it's more thematic, too. You'd expect a piece named "behemoth" to be big and flashy and expensive, not be slumming around with the cheapest and weakest combat champs.
I like it

I agree that minion play is too heavily restricted right now. The way I see it, minions unable to retreat are generally in need of a buff, either directly or by reducing the effectiveness of their counters. In simple terms, the easiest gains to make against your opponent are small ones, typically this means picking off minions. For this purpose, people began focusing on the use of ranger++ because it's the most cost-effective way of sniping minions with little risk. Different metas offered different answers: 0 cost spearmen held ranger back, 10 cost (was it?) frostmage+++ shut them down, OP breakfast, gravitymage and moonfox rendered them irrelevant, cheap reaver++ and pikeman++ seemed to put harassment tools out of business. Of course, there are viable (cheap) alternatives to ranger now in the form of necromancer, lust, behemoth, lilith and even champions that use poison or lightning to target minions (also potentially vampire but I don't understand it well enough to comment). Placing this 'harrassment' or 'minion hunter' archetype at the right place in the meta seems to be *the* central balancing issue of CEO.
As Ryan points out, we're looking at a situation where most minions simply aren't very useful, and high end play is in some ways stale. You can roll the dice with pawns for example, but your success depends too much on the opponent's layout: pawns may be shoved away with wind magic, run over with samurai triggers, charmed, or picked off with non-melee attacks (I understand that 0-value pieces aren't supposed to be without weaknesses, but with proper design they should also have viable applications). When dealing with these threats, the concept of protection which was central to chess no longer exists; there is no way to 'defend' a piece targeted with non-melee destruction, there are only options to move the piece until you can't anymore, or until your opponent is satisfied with its misplacement, or to forget it and create your own threats. Ultimately, what this means is that **minions that cannot retreat are generally underpowered**. That's because minions able to retreat may avoid running out of moves, but when you can only move forward you eventually encounter your opponent's realm of influence and the piece cannot continue to safely advance. This is all well known by master level players, and in my experience it heavily defines play at and above that point. There are also exceptions to this rule, especially samurai, but generally minions that can only advance are a significant liability in the upper levels of play.
As pointed out by F3 above, nerfing harrassment units greatly empowers lich, which can more or less slow roll armies that shun minion hunters and the non-melee destruction mechanic in general. As probably the most infamous lich user, I can attest that lich is very powerful as things currently stand. I think it's probably a bad idea to weaken any of its counters. So how can we adjust things to "Make Minions Great Again"? Direct buffs to minions and the introduction of new minions has been tried and so far has failed to offer reasonable answers to harassment units without being so OP as to command the metagame begin to revolve around them. Recent efforts have been better -- duelist+++ and apprentice+++ are both units capable of dealing with harassment, but these are both expensive minions that can retreat. What I think would help the game is if cheap minions, and minions that can't retreat, were somehow made more viable. This would allow players to drive the play forward, focusing on tempo, as explained by drak, rather than stagnant setups with gradual, intense pressure buildup over minor targets, as in the multi-behemoth example. I suspect the introduction of wrath may have had this concept in mind, with its passive rewarding tempo-play and its lightning punishing slow, solid constructions. Unfortunately, I don't think it was a complete success as wrath's immobility actually slows down its user and reduces the likelihood its passive will be relevantly positioned. **A wrath with teleport** would make it far more interesting and might speed up the meta, assuming it can be balanced.
To be honest, I'd like to see lich reworked and most non-melee destruction effects removed from the game, but I suspect that would never happen. The thing is, now that we've sat around killing immobile minions all game for hundreds of hours, I think we'd all like to see something else happen from time to time. I'm exaggerating, clearly, but that's not far from what I've observed. I'd like to see the structural aspect of chess find some place in CEO. "Pawns don't move backwards" is common wisdom in chess, pointing out that you have to be careful not to overextend your pawn structure lest it be targeted. Unfortunately, in CEO the relative power of the pieces means that any advance at all is an overextension for these sorts of minions and even being on the board leaves them vulnerable. **How about giving pawn upgrades or similar minions ranged, magic and trigger immunity? I think it'd make a world of difference for the game. Let minions claim space and construct firm, unflimsy formations! That's what they were for in chess, and that's something they should be capable of doing in CEO.**
What do you guys think of these suggestions? What other ideas can we come up with?

> *Originally posted by **[aspire43](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11256135)**:*
> Ultimately, what this means is that **minions that cannot retreat are generally underpowered**. That's because minions able to retreat may avoid running out of moves, but when you can only move forward you eventually encounter your opponent's realm of influence and the piece cannot continue to safely advance. This is all well known by master level players, and in my experience it heavily defines play at and above that point. **There are also exceptions to this rule, especially samurai**, but generally minions that can only advance are a significant liability in the upper levels of play.
This is a good post in general but I want to highlight this idea in general because I suspect the core issue is less the problem of minion vs. anti-minion imbalances and more minion vs. minion imbalance. Samurai are good enough to justify the existence and encourage the use of minion harassers; outside of very specialized roles most alternative line minions exist primarily as a reaction to anti-samurai harassers, either by being more resilient to harassment tactics (frost mephit, other backwards-movers) or by skimping out and hoping to make up the difference in champion strength (various cost 0 minions). Even so, samurai are extremely prevalent.
I don't think the solution is to nerf samurai, since they're an interesting piece, but I don't think the solution is to nerf samurai counters, because they're not interesting enough that the game would be improved by pushing samurai even harder (which is what nerfing harassment pieces would effectively do). So buffing weaker minions sounds like a fantastic idea. The idea of giving immunities to pawns specifically is really appealing since it fits the theme of classic chess, although balancing it could be tricky. In the interests of diversity I'd prefer to see different buffs for other garbage tier minions though.

> *Originally posted by **[LesserDrak](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11258730)**:*
> If you guys are really struggling with samurai I suggest giving a wall of salamanders+ a try, they counter it pretty hard.
Salamanders are very similar to samurai, so ultimately this doesn't do much to diversify minions nor does it give people more minion-centric answers to minion harassment powers.

> *Originally posted by **[aspire43](/forums/32630/topics/759058?page=1#11256135)**:*
> I agree that minion play is too heavily restricted right now. The way I see it, minions unable to retreat are generally in need of a buff, either directly or by reducing the effectiveness of their counters. In simple terms, the easiest gains to make against your opponent are small ones, typically this means picking off minions. For this purpose, people began focusing on the use of ranger++ because it's the most cost-effective way of sniping minions with little risk. Different metas offered different answers: 0 cost spearmen held ranger back, 10 cost (was it?) frostmage+++ shut them down, OP breakfast, gravitymage and moonfox rendered them irrelevant, cheap reaver++ and pikeman++ seemed to put harassment tools out of business. Of course, there are viable (cheap) alternatives to ranger now in the form of necromancer, lust, behemoth, lilith and even champions that use poison or lightning to target minions (also potentially vampire but I don't understand it well enough to comment). Placing this 'harrassment' or 'minion hunter' archetype at the right place in the meta seems to be *the* central balancing issue of CEO.
>
> As Ryan points out, we're looking at a situation where most minions simply aren't very useful, and high end play is in some ways stale. You can roll the dice with pawns for example, but your success depends too much on the opponent's layout: pawns may be shoved away with wind magic, run over with samurai triggers, charmed, or picked off with non-melee attacks (I understand that 0-value pieces aren't supposed to be without weaknesses, but with proper design they should also have viable applications). When dealing with these threats, the concept of protection which was central to chess no longer exists; there is no way to 'defend' a piece targeted with non-melee destruction, there are only options to move the piece until you can't anymore, or until your opponent is satisfied with its misplacement, or to forget it and create your own threats. Ultimately, what this means is that **minions that cannot retreat are generally underpowered**. That's because minions able to retreat may avoid running out of moves, but when you can only move forward you eventually encounter your opponent's realm of influence and the piece cannot continue to safely advance. This is all well known by master level players, and in my experience it heavily defines play at and above that point. There are also exceptions to this rule, especially samurai, but generally minions that can only advance are a significant liability in the upper levels of play.
>
> As pointed out by F3 above, nerfing harrassment units greatly empowers lich, which can more or less slow roll armies that shun minion hunters and the non-melee destruction mechanic in general. As probably the most infamous lich user, I can attest that lich is very powerful as things currently stand. I think it's probably a bad idea to weaken any of its counters. So how can we adjust things to "Make Minions Great Again"? Direct buffs to minions and the introduction of new minions has been tried and so far has failed to offer reasonable answers to harassment units without being so OP as to command the metagame begin to revolve around them. Recent efforts have been better -- duelist+++ and apprentice+++ are both units capable of dealing with harassment, but these are both expensive minions that can retreat. What I think would help the game is if cheap minions, and minions that can't retreat, were somehow made more viable. This would allow players to drive the play forward, focusing on tempo, as explained by drak, rather than stagnant setups with gradual, intense pressure buildup over minor targets, as in the multi-behemoth example. I suspect the introduction of wrath may have had this concept in mind, with its passive rewarding tempo-play and its lightning punishing slow, solid constructions. Unfortunately, I don't think it was a complete success as wrath's immobility actually slows down its user and reduces the likelihood its passive will be relevantly positioned. **A wrath with teleport** would make it far more interesting and might speed up the meta, assuming it can be balanced.
>
> To be honest, I'd like to see lich reworked and most non-melee destruction effects removed from the game, but I suspect that would never happen. The thing is, now that we've sat around killing immobile minions all game for hundreds of hours, I think we'd all like to see something else happen from time to time. I'm exaggerating, clearly, but that's not far from what I've observed. I'd like to see the structural aspect of chess find some place in CEO. "Pawns don't move backwards" is common wisdom in chess, pointing out that you have to be careful not to overextend your pawn structure lest it be targeted. Unfortunately, in CEO the relative power of the pieces means that any advance at all is an overextension for these sorts of minions and even being on the board leaves them vulnerable. **How about giving pawn upgrades or similar minions ranged, magic and trigger immunity? I think it'd make a world of difference for the game. Let minions claim space and construct firm, unflimsy formations! That's what they were for in chess, and that's something they should be capable of doing in CEO.**
>
> What do you guys think of these suggestions? What other ideas can we come up with?
Pretty much the main motivation behind this post.
I would suggest giving Skeleton Summons a "Summoned" status so they only last 5 rounds or something, and making it an unremovable status. I think, well-intended as the Summons idea was, no-one wants to see people simply spamming 20 skeletons and winning (unless they are the one doing it)

That would make lich really weak and the upgrade function of necro would become almost useless. The only way people would get 20 skeletons that way is combining it with some morale farm unit (dryad, EA). Don't only punish the summoning units if it is that strong or you will break the units for people who don't combine it with such morale farm units.